1. The Spark in the Fire

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. You might think that you don't believe in magic. But if you really look close, I reckon you'll discover that's not so true. Have you ever blown out birthday candles and made a wish? Or have you sat in a traffic jam, willing the cards ahead to move? Come on. Have you had a grazed knee kissed better? Or touched a tree for luck? That is a belief in magic.

I'm India Rackson, and you're listening to Witch from BBC Radio 4. This is a series which seeks to uncover the truth about this mysterious and magical figure in many of its guises. What even is a witch? Perhaps not what you think. There are many, many witches out there now, and I want to know why. Why are so many people drawn to witchcraft? In this series, you're not gonna find many pointy hats or broomsticks. That is an image crafted by persecutors and murderers.

The witch is the enemy of God, is the enemy of God. is the enemy of man Is the enemy of the state? I'm gonna show you the image of the witch now. I want to know how this one word, which can still be a little bit more than a little bit. Yeah. Over the next week. to witness offerings and rituals. We'll look at magic head-on because magic has a science and science has a sense of magic and we'll root around in that entanglement.

Blood, I called T. And I want to explore the witch's proximity to other worlds and to death, a place that most of us hold at arm's length. Blood of my blood, I call to you. Rydyn ni'n gweithio. Rydyn ni'n gweithio. Rydyn ni'n gweithio. Rydyn ni'n gweithio. with the highest good and I will visualise a protected circle around this space.

We'll investigate the legacy of the witch trials, the cold-blooded murder and torture of thousands of people. It's a name in my bloodline and it's sounds absolutely horrendous what happened. Three hundred and sixty-eight women were burned out of twenty-two villages, which could have left hardly an adult woman alive in them. and show how myths laid down back then still have a stranglehold on people's lives. From ageism to reproductive rights, to our friendships and healthcare. The question

of what is a witch can perhaps never be fully answered. But one thing is for sure. Understanding the history of witchcraft and the complex factors behind the rise of it today can tell us so much about the world and ourselves now. Because the which really is a question. And the question is, who are you? I think you can do this if you want. Oh my god.

You're listening to Which with me, India Rackerson. Episode 1. The Spark in the Fire. So how do you know if you're a witch? It's almost like, you know, a protection thing as well, isn't it? The fire gives us so much. Fire, fire burning bright in the darkness of the night. Drive away all pain and fear. Drive away all pain and fear, bring my desires ever near. The more we chant the flame seems to be more dancy and flickery and just going with whatever. It's like you're making this happen.

It's Beltane, Mayday, a night for awakenings, merrymaking, revelry. Beltane is full of fertility, but also it's quite, it's a bit naughty, isn't it, Beltane? It's about sex for sex sake. Like a teenage party. Yes, yes it is. There's a frisky air to it. This ancient Gaelic ritual has been celebrated for hundreds and hundreds of years as spring rises to its peak and the final chill falls away.

It is linked to workers' rights. And I think the idea of it was that people needed that time off to connect with land into nature. As the years go on, we just keep seeing those themes reemerge. Beltane's name means bright fire. It is a celebration of the light, new life, a stirring of heat. A good place for us to begin our journey.

And if you look carefully into the smoke of the fire tonight, you might see the goddess Freya emerging,'cause she presides over this night. She's the Norse goddess of abundance, war, and magic. In Dutch, this knight is known as Witch's Knight. Fire fire burning bright. For Emma Catherine and her sister Nick, standing over the fire crackling with Hawthorne in a back garden in Nottingham, it is a night for transformation and magic. Protect me from unseen foes, drive away my would-be woes.

I always feel like from the moment you start getting ready for ritual, it's almost like the beginning of ritual. The lay in the fire, even the simple act of scrunching up the paper and Mae'n hynny'n hynny'n hynny'n hynny'n hynny'n hynny'n hynny'n hynny'n hynny'n hyn. Party invitation. You're burning. Why don't you want to go to her party? Verdict. Fire, fire, burning bright.

I'm with them because I'm deeply curious. I'm a journalist and I look for answers all the time, but I really feel something in my bones, a kind of clawing and a whispering that I just don't have words for. Drive away would be woes. Fire fire, burning bright, fill me with your protective light.

Because this is the thing that's nagging me. I definitely used to be magical. When I was little I did all of the things little kids do, I went hunting down the bottom of the garden for fairies. I had a little lavender coloured book with fake weathering full of spells that my sister and I tried together, and she and I built whole worlds in our minds.

There was Megan Mogg, Mildred Hubble, and Sabrina. Round the corner from us were the eerie caves of perhaps England's most famous prophetess, Old Mother Shipton, where the water turned life to stone. I thought I could fly, or rub a coin and get away. I was drawn to the witches around me, with a drop of fear, but mainly with an excited knocking in my chest, feeling that something else was going on. I was small but I was full of power. And when I grew up, all of that sort of disappeared. But then.

A few years ago, I was looking for ways to pick at the world around me and try and make some meaning of it. I sort of wanted a good reason to hold soil in my hands or say out loud things I needed, like strength or change. And that magical feeling I once had started to bubble up. I suddenly owned a spell book again, a couple of books about witches, and I was constantly on the edge of sort of whispering. Maybe that's why you're round this fire with us tonight.

Because on one hand, witches feel like the stuff of nightmares, distant dreams, history, or fiction. But open up your eyes. Their numbers in the real world seem to be multiplying. They're everywhere and talking about their craft. In books, online, on TV. But what makes a witch? yw'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd all of those things that we want to achieve for ourselves

Emma Catherine is a teacher, a mother, and a witch. She invited me to join her in her house in Nottingham to celebrate Beltane and to talk about what drew her to witchcraft. Like growing up our household is quite open, but not really religious. Um mum's always been a bit of a free spirit anyway. And I can remember like being interested in it. And so she'd been to the library just to get her own normal books and she'd checked me a book out. It was uh Where to Park Your Broomstick.

by Lauren Manoy. I think that's the author's name. And so I read that from cover to cover. I think I made my mum recheck it out. Oh, it was just like it was aimed at um teens and like young people. And it was just really interesting things like talking about things like Sabbath, so you know, the Wheel of the Year.

The Wheel of the Year you'll hear a lot about in this series. It's a modern pagan concept based on old traditions. It's made up of eight sabbaths or celebrations that mark out the orbit of the Earth. Beltain, when I meet with Emma, celebrates that feeling that summer is coming.

We're gonna start with the most mundane of elements, the earth, the very land that we're standing on. How old were you? Oh. I don't know. I think I might have been about fourteen. Were you like, uh, now I can just go tell everyone I'm a witch? Uh Uh not really because I was always quite a shy kid anyway. So labels are like weird things, aren't they? You know. I know it's the like as soon as you start to label something it stops being that thing, you know, like the label

True. That's such a good point. Yeah. Rydyn ni'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio And Emma's not the only witch in the family. Who was the first witch? Here. Yeah. Which which was the first question? From a very very very young age. These patio windows I always remember just being little and like staring out, and I always used to like watch the

plants blowing with the wind and if there was music playing it was like I was making that happen. The more I stared it's like the more it danced with music and it's like I felt like I was doing that. Do you know what I mean? Like I had that little power. But there's loads of little things that I thought I felt different with. So I don't know, who came first? Emerald Nicholas.

You just took it more serious and to the next I think that witchcraft helps young people feel powerful and step into power on their own terms. This is Pam Grossman, podcaster and author of Waking the Witch. She's also a film consultant. Yeah. When I was a teenager, watching witch films or gathering with my friends trying to And a huge part of that was the nineteen ninety six film. perhaps to find a wage for many people.

And while the craft is all of that promise and more, it's not a great advert for magic. Four teenagers find witchcraft and all get power hungry. Destroy each other. But it had a huge impact on a lot of people. We are the weirdos. A sequel was made, and Pam was asked to consult the Writers and directors now realize that witches are not just these fictional creatures, that there are people like me out there for whom

Witchcraft is central to our identity and to our spirituality. A lot of things I did for that film were around helping them come up with like the symbolic language and the images. that occurred throughout the films, figure out certain deities that they might be invoking. And it's helping the director and the writer really build their own magical world, but one that doesn't seem like stupid or offensive.

And of course all of this is very close to Pam's heart. So Pam, when did you first start calling yourself a witch? You know, it was a word that I privately knew about myself. I would say since I was a teenager, but it wasn't a word that I started using publicly until I was in my twenties. twenties. Interestingly, it's a word that shapeshifts for me, as witches so often are shapeshifters.

They are flick through books of witches, or even confessions of women burnt as witches, and there are tangled tales of women slipping away in the night, often as a hare or bird, wolf or deer, evasive and unknowable. And this is why I actually always kind of get tense when people ask me, What is a witch? I'm like, I wrote a whole book about it because it's so hard to sum up, you know.

I like to remind people that this is a word that has a history of being a negative epithet. It was traditionally a word used by other people about someone else that they were trying to shame or persecute or silence. And so it's only relatively recently that people have started choosing that word for themselves. So when I use the word witch about myself, I mean that I am someone who Honors the divine in everything, and who believes in the power of intentional ritualized transformation.

So witch can be many different things, but what you cannot do is separate the idea of the witch from the idea of magic. My first memories of making magic were when I was very, very little. We had these woods in our backyard and when I was a kid I would go out there And cast little spells just very intuitively and imaginatively using stones and twigs. Like it was this really holy place for me. You know, some could just say like that's just a kid being a kid and being

and being imaginative and playful, but I think most children are very magical and that we're taught to grow out of that. And instead I just grew more deeply into it. It's interesting'cause I think I look back and I'm like, I was sort of I was always really interested and you know I'm like, how witchy was was I or how interested in magic was I if I sort of really look back. I had a log which I carved a face into.

And I've just not ever thought about it again, but we did that and my best friend Kerry and I used to like rub mud on a little stone pig and leave little flower offerings. That's what I'm saying. Being a child is when I first remember making magic, but certainly when I was a teenager, I mean that's when the shit hit the fan. Yeah. The teen witch phase, when you come out of endless imaginative play as a child and you kind of enter this more ritualized

perhaps craft. Maybe you had one, maybe you didn't. Or maybe you did and actually you've just suppressed it. Whatever. Undeniably, there's something about this relationship between magic and being a teenager that makes for great stories. When you're a teenager, you suddenly feel very out of control. You feel out of control of your body changing. You feel out of control of certain social dynamics. It's awful.

It's awful. Let's just say that. Let's just take a moment for adolescence. What a horrific time of life. And yet, you know, witchcraft gives people agency. It makes people feel Like they can at least take control over this part of their life. And Pam was a teen witch in the 90s, when many young people were trying out witchcraft, and when the original craft film was released. It absolutely had a huge effect on pop culture. But here's the other thing that was going on in the nineties. We had

We had the Anita Hill hearings. We had the Riot Girl movement. We had Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton and conversations about sexual harassment and sexual autonomy. really happening for young women and this third wave of feminism kind of cresting. I actually see the kind of witches in pop culture that were coming out in the nineteen nineties to be deeply interrelated to the cultural conversations happening around third wave feminism and sexual autonomy.

And it's not hard to look around and see how this might very well be the case today. When it comes to gender based violence or laws and controls placed on our bodies, witchcraft seems to provide a map for people to dig around their sense of self And when you're a teenager, that's a difficult road to navigate. For Emma, witchcraft has been a path of discovery and a continuing way to connect to herself and her family.

Obviously I'm mixed race and my dad's from Jamaica. He was born in Jamaica and he came over to the UK when he was about six or seven, I think. So I always felt like whichever side I was concentrating on, I was ignoring the other. My paternal grandma was extremely Christian. But like my dad's not really religious. And he doesn't really believe in what I do either. You know, we'll have a laugh and a joke about it. But I can remember one day he came round

And just on his way out I had a bookshelf in the hall and he's always saying to me, What are you gonna do with all of these books? And then he's noticed that there's a lot of witchcraft or like English or British witchcraft books or European based ones. And then it's just like, Where's all your obeyable? And then that was like, Oh, okay. A beer being a form of witchcraft practiced in Jamaica.

And other parts of the Caribbean. So I term it like Afro Caribbean witchcraft because Mae'n llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r

The idea of the witch helps open up doors into our past and ask questions of who went before us and what they did. Someone who does trace witches and their history is this man. Okay.

I just found witchcraft glamorous in the nineteen sixties because a lot of people did. It was very much in the news. And it was becoming a feminist issue. And it was becoming an issue about others in cultural life against whom we define ourselves, and like a good circa nineteen seventies liberal I felt sorry for all the others that have been demonized by our civilization.

Professor Ronald Hutton is a leading authority on ancient and medieval paganism and magic, and modern paganism. He's also the author of The Witch, a history of fear from ancient times to the present.

It goes into mind-blowing detail about what makes a witch in all corners of the globe. I met him in Bristol where he lives and works. He turns up in his signature tweed jacket, waistcoat and cravat combination. We chat over a sandwich and then spend hours together in a booth discussing the history of witchcraft. is a witch.

There are four different definitions of the witch circulating in the modern world, and I have to reckon with all of them. First is probably the oldest that a witch is somebody who uses magic to hurt other people. Second is almost as old, maybe as old. A witch is somebody who uses magic for any purpose, good or bad. People who use this language often differentiate so called white witches or good witches. From bad witches. Those are two really old languages. They go back to the Anglo Saxons.

The other two languages are modern, they appear in the nineteenth century. One of them is a witch is a a feminist, a feisty woman persecuted for independence and strength by the patriarchy. And the other is that a witch is a practitioner of a pagan nature-based religion. And all those actually are viable, but um they are knocking into each other like dodgem cars in a fairground at the moment, and I have to keep stepping out of the way. Close your eyes. How do you imagine witches? Thank you.

Since the beginning of time, pretty much, they have had many different iterations, like the great ancient witches. There's Circe, the witch who could turn men to pigs, Hecate, the Greek and Roman goddess of witchcraft. What about Baba Yaga? A witch of Slavic folklore, a woman with a house with chicken feet. Or there's a 99% chance you're seeing a pointy hat and broomstick, perhaps a hooked nose, a witch with a black cat and a spark of malice.

These are images that came from the wood carvings and propaganda of the early modern witch hunts. But these are old, old, old depictions of witches and often they're created by men. Thanks. But the moment I start actually meeting and talking to witches, it's clear that many of the archetypes don't hold today.

The idea of the witch now encompasses much, much more. As someone who has extensively studied the history of magic, I was interested to know what Ronald makes of the rise in modern witches. Well witchcraft has all sorts of really useful resonances for uh current people. For one thing, the witch is one of the few very potent and enduring images of independent female power that traditional culture has given us. So the witch has a feminist resonance uh anyway.

And the other is that witchcraft is about personal growth, self discovery and self empowerment, and those are three interwoven major themes of the discovery of the individual in modern culture. And It took me a while to say I'm a witch, and when I did say it, it felt like an act of resistance. Did it? Yeah.

This is Tatum, a producer on our team, and Tatum is also a witch. Tatum's great. They make a witchy folklore podcast called Honey in the Hex, which you should definitely go seek out. And like Emma and Pam, being a witch is a central part of Tatum's identity. When did you first say it? Well, I actually was told I was a witch before I identified as a witch. Were you? So people would Which is keep saying this. Yeah. Interesting.

When it came to characters, like film characters, people would always say, Oh you remind me of this character. I think it was because I was very in touch with the darker things in life from a young age and maybe that sort of showed up without me even knowing it was. I've gone through a lot from a very young age and so I never really had an opportunity to be a child. I've always sort of felt like an adult.

I had to sort of step into a role where I was taking care of myself because there was so much neglect. So It's been a lot. Mm. And so when I was eighteen and I came to London and I thought I was starting a new life and I got this scholarship to go to stage school Then when my disability took form, it was just like another thing that was completely taken out of my hands, which was the one thing I was holding on to that I could control. Mm-hmm. So I have muscular dystrophy.

It affects my hips, my legs, my shoulders, and the muscles waste away and then they don't regrow. There's no known cure. And it's progressive. So that does affect my daily life. In a way, witchcraft has also been a really powerful tool for me because there's a crossover of us pushing against

you know, the the binaries we're put in, the expectations. Mm-hmm. I guess it's yeah, it made me feel even more powerful to be a misfit or an outsider, even if I didn't choose to be an outsider. I am naturally pushed out because the world isn't accessible. I had to find sanctuary within myself. I always would find the magic in places that I was going.

and I've had very unstable living circumstances. So from the age of eighteen to now being twenty nine, I've had to move around a lot. I was living in a homeless hostel. It was a tiny room, a single bed and a chest of drawers and I made an altar on those drawers.

Anywhere I go, I will make an altar because it roots me to where I am, even in dark circumstances. So I think with all the things I've gone through, magic has a been a way for me to take spaces that Aren't where I would like to be, but make them as sacred as possible. As I will it, so moat it be.

Thank you. As I will it, so moth it be. So apologies for the random assortment of glasses. My good shot glasses are on my uh topper leg barota. Yes, the good ones are on my altar and Darren's like, where's the good shop glasses? I'm like, they're on my altar. Back in Nottingham around the fire, with Emma and her sister Nick, there's celebrations to be had. Drink and be married.

So we write down on a piece of paper what we'd like to bring into our lives and what we'd like to cast out and we burn it in the Beltane fire. Rydyn ni'n ymwneud â'r hynny. Rydyn ni'n ymwneud â'r hynny. Rydyn ni'n ymwneud â'r hynny. Rydyn ni'n ymwneud â'r hynny. As I will it, so shall it be. Like you I put self doubt. I would like to let that go. And I just want to welcome in lots more joy, a sense of kind of playfulness in life. More joy.

Emma, Nicola, Tatum and I watch the ashes of the paper rise into the night sky. As we started this episode, I wanted to know how you know if you're a witch. And it seems to be about well Power, agency, identity, choice, and safety. And what I really relate to is that sort of tickly feeling when I think about magic, the fire in the belly. I am quite far away, I think, from calling myself.

myself a witch, but Frisky Beltain has been a good place to start this journey. Because it's become quickly obvious that there is something else that binds all of the witches I meet. Whether it's calling on the elements, burning fires, altars of sticks and stones. All witches feel that the birthplace of magic is the land around us. Next time on Whitch we get out into the wild to find out just how much nature shapes us. Yeah. What is the connection between the natural world and the witch?

I'm India Raxon, and you've been listening to Whitch from BBC Radio 4. You can find all the episodes by searching on BBC Sounds now. And I absolutely knew that nobody else was in the house. Uncanny. is back. The on duty flight lieutenant came in white as a sheet. And he said it's back. Season 2. Featuring brand new stories of real-life encounters with the I had never been so Subscribe on BC Sounds if you dare.